alphabet,alphabet samplerNick Michaelset of graphs, or characters, used to represent the phonemic structure of a language. In most alphabets the characters are arranged in a definite order, or sequence (e.g., A, B, C, etc.).

In the usual case, each alphabetic character represents either a consonant or a vowel, rather than a syllable or group of consonants and vowels. As a result, the number of characters required can be held to a relative few. A language that has 30 consonant sounds and five vowels, for ... (100 of 10,141 words)